Data may be displayed in any number of different ways. One traditional approach that has been used to display data is a tabular representation. In a tabular representation, data is displayed in a table format with records displayed as rows in the table and attributes of the records displayed as columns. The attribute values are displayed in a textual format in cells (the intersection of a row and a column). With large data sets, a user has to scroll through multiple pages to view all the data. Additionally, this type of view does not facilitate rapid user comprehension of the data set.
Another technique that has been used is to display data in a table format, but instead of displaying the data values as textual values, the data is displayed as graphical bars. To get more detailed information, the user may specify a focus region to see the textual values of the data. This technique may allow a user to view large amounts of data on a single screen and more easily notice data trends with data sets having two dimensions of data. However, this type of display does not provide for the comprehension of hierarchical relationships in multidimensional data having multiple hierarchical levels.